Do you have a natural ability at physics?

Question

In order to understand physics, what do you do? Do you study very hard at it? Or do you have a natural ability in that area? If you're good at physics, do you have a better understanding of maths and sciences as opposed to English and literature, or do you have a combinatation of both?

And if you're really good at physics, what can you recommend to someone who wants to be like you? Jsut study hard, or is there someoner advice, or specific books one can read? Thanks for your good and honest answer.

Answer 1

I'm a physics graduate student and I can definitely tell you that I don't have some special natural ability.  Anyone can be good at physics, it just takes patience and willingness to learn.  It helps to have a lot of imagination.  Albert Einstein said he didn't have some special ability.  He said it wasn't that he was smarter than other people, just that he stuck with problems a lot longer.  He valued his imagination more than his ability to memorize facts.  Einstein suggested that there were three types of scientist, those that study science because its a job and they want to earn money, those that study because they're naturally really smart and science gives them something to think about, and those that study out of a kind of religious devotion...they want to understand the world and their place in it...they want to know the mind of God.  I'm not bad at English and literature...in fact I love reading.  Personally, I've always viewed math as a kind of language.  Proving mathematical theorems is a lot like playing games with language.  First you make some definitions and then play around with those definitions.  Because of its precision, math is just the language that we choose to describe the natural world.  It helps to be well rounded and to know a lot about a lot of different fields.  I'm always annoyed when I meet a mathematician that doesn't know anything about history, or an english major that doesn't know any biology.  Just stick with it and study.  I know that at times studying physics can get a bit discouraging, but just keep patient and remind yourself of why you want to study it.  Determination and imagination...those are the keys to being a good physicist.